As time goes on, computers and computing devices have become increasingly more advanced, allowing users to do more things, in more places, and in less time. Desktop computers largely gave way to laptop computers, which largely gave way to tablet computers and slates. Mobile telephones became smart phones and allowed users to be plugged into the Internet on the go. Even televisions have become smart devices, allowing users to be constantly connected to the Internet and engage in a variety of activities. During all of these advances, consumers have regularly used these various computing devices to purchase products on the Internet and engage in electronic commerce (e-commerce). However, while the devices consumers used advanced, the consumer e-commerce experience has remained largely the same.
In the traditional online shopping experience, a consumer would see an advertisement for a product, navigate to a website offering the product, find the product on the site, add it to a shopping cart, confirm shipping and billing details, and then purchase the product. This type of purchasing process requires significant time and interaction on the part of the consumer, and as a result has a high abandonment rate. Some websites that offer products for purchase have attempted to streamline the process, allowing for a user to save billing and shipping information and forego the use of a shopping cart, which lets a user to purchase an item directly from a webpage.
However, this improved process is only available to consumers who were already at the retail site, and were therefore previously interested to a product and went to the website to browse. Therefore, if a consumer were viewing an advertisement and wished to take advantage of the easier process, they would still be required to navigate to the retailer website, search for the product, and then make the purchase. This process can be increasingly cumbersome on mobile computing devices, where navigating and searching can be more difficult. To assist consumers, some advertisers have begun to embed advertisements with hyperlinks directly to a retailer that offers the more streamlined purchase process.
However, providing a hyperlink still requires the consumer to leave the media they are viewing to visit the retailer website. If the media is being viewed in a separate application (e.g., a news reader), it requires the launching of and switching to a browser, which can take considerable time, resources, and patience on the part of the consumer. Furthermore, it takes the consumer away from the digital media they are viewing, which on one hand can deter the consumer from making the purchase, or on the other can pull the consumer away from the media and reduce the possibility of additional purchases. Thus, there is a perceived opportunity to improve the display of product information on a consumer device and the initiation of a transaction for the product without detracting from the digital media.